If you are old enough, do you remember where you were? I was at our house (provided by the Embassy) in Manila. I believe it was early morning and my parents and some of the neighbors were around the TV watching the live broadcast.

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I was in Berkeley, California, at my lab partner's house doing a quantitative analysis lab write-up with him. I was so immersed in my studies that year that I had no idea that we even *planned* to put a man on the moon until the moment I saw it live.

We finished the write-up, my lab partner turned on his TV, and I was so completely blown away and in awe.

__________________5/17/2018: Retired a second time, this time from my volunteer Admin duties. After 10 years of being on the team, and 40,000+ posts, the time just seemed right. It has been such fun to work with all of our Mods and Admins and I plan to stick around as a regular member.

I was camping with my parents on a remote lake in Texas. I listened to the news on the radio in our pickup truck. It was scratchy, bad reception, probably the clear channel out of Chicago. It was night time with no lights around and the moon overhead. I was alone in the pickup cab. It is hard for me to believe now, but my parents just ignored the occasion and went to bed.

Actually I was at the launch about 3-4 miles away, have a 16mm movie of it.
My uncle worked at the cape so I was able to witness the event. I made it home for the landing,and saw it on TV, I remember it well I was 21, 5 days later.
I have newspapers wrapped in plastic from the day of the landing, hopefully they will
last another 50 years.

I was at my brothers apartment at the University of Cincinnati. He and his wife had their little daughter ready to baptise at the Catholic church and I was going to be her Godfather. I was in awe of the moon landing as I had been a big fan of NASA ever since its beginning. I followed everything and was completely up to date on all the terminology. I guess that's something an engineer would do. I've followed the shuttle program and some day before they scrub the program, I want to get over to the Cape and watch a live shuttle launch. Friend of mine says its awesome. On a cloudless night I can watch the launch from the end of my driveway. It would be about 160 miles away but you can see the flames and smoke clearly. It lights up the sky pretty good.

I took a day off work -(pssst -titanium), Boeing 2707(everyone knows what that was Right?) to watch tv.

heh heh heh - by 1970 after the last person leaving Seattle turned out the lights I was working on Skylab. .

What a shame the Boeing 2707 was cancelled! I had forgotten all about it.

__________________5/17/2018: Retired a second time, this time from my volunteer Admin duties. After 10 years of being on the team, and 40,000+ posts, the time just seemed right. It has been such fun to work with all of our Mods and Admins and I plan to stick around as a regular member.

The lunar landing was the climax of the space age that began with Sputnik. (I just barely remember seeing Sputnik arc across the sky. We had left home before dawn on a road trip, and my father spotted it.)

I imagine that many of us who post on this forum were influenced by the big national push for science and engineering education. I might have never made it out of my rural Texas hometown had it not been for the National Science Foundation summer science programs for high school students.

On the other hand, every bright student was hustled along the science/engineering path, including those of us who may have been better suited to other careers.

The "space race" was a big deal, and had a profound effect on my generation's education and career choices.

W*rked the 3 to 11 p.m. shift at this resort hotel with a bunch of other college kids off for the summer. Not a bad summer job; Sammy Davis, Jr. played there that year and I saw him from the wings. The food was great, they put leftovers from five French chefs in the employee cafeteria. Donít recall seeing it live but saw it on the midnight news. It was a very warm day/evening.

Like many geeky kids, I was huge fan of the space program. One of my favorite records was recordings of the Mercury program mission. Unfortunately mom decided that that 3rd week in July 69 would be a good time to send me to summer camp. I was sort of ambivalent about summer camp, but screamed in protest that I couldn't go that week because WE WERE LANDING ON THE MOON that week.

She said oh don't worry dear there will be a TV. Well mom was sort of right, but mostly wrong. The TV consisted of a small 13" black and white TV with bad reception and on July 20, 1969 I watch Neil and Buzz with 30 other 8 to 11 year olds. It was pretty pissed that were behaving so badly that I couldn't hear much of what Uncle Walter was saying. I do remember that all but two idiots shut up for the historic first steps. My dear mother has felt guilty all these years and goes out of her way to get me space oriented stuff.

The first thing I did after getting home from my Alaska cruise last night was pet the kitties, the second thing I do was to Tivo all the space shows on History and Discovery.

One of the seldom mentioned spin offs of the space program, was that it inspired a generation of scientist and engineers like myself. I imagine would still be able to use something like the internet to communicate if we didn't go to the moon, but I am not sure we would have done it so soon.

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